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Has weathered prohibition, take-over rumors, new owners
Shiner is the home of the
Spoetzl Brewery, the only inde
pendent brewery now left in Texas.
The Shiner Brewery Association
was founded in 1909 by a group of
local businessmen and farmers.
“This was a farming and ranch
area settled by German and
Czechoslovakian people,” said J.L.
“Speedy” Beal, the brewery’s
sales manager of 25 years. “Unlike
the English, they had to have their
beer with them everywhere they
went, so instead of setting up a
whiskey distillery, they set up a
brewery.”
Due to expenses, the small cor
poration was forced to sell. The
brewery then passed into the
hands of Kosmos Spoetzl, a
German-born brewmaster working
for the Pyramid Brewing Company
of Cairo, Egypt.
Moving to South Texas because
of ill-health, Spoetzl leased the
brewery in 1914 for one year with
the option to buy. In 1915 the
Spoetzl Brewery was born.
For the next three years,
Spoetzl’s brewery was a thriving
success. Then, in 1918, Prohibition
almost knocked him out of the
business.
“Spoetzl turned this brewery into
an ice factory and at the same
time, made near-beer,” Beal said.
“However, the near-beer wasn’t
the only beer he produced. He also
put out a ‘good beer.’”
Near-beer is regularly brewed
beer with the same flavor, but the
alcohol has been boiled out of it. It
can’t contain over one-twelfth of
one percent.
Joe Green, a retired employee,
worked for the plant for over 45
years driving a delivery truck, re
members the boiling process.
“I remember when we’d have to
reboil the beer to get all the alcohol
out. I live up from the brewery and
some days you could almost get
drunk from the smell in the air.”
Spoetzl’s brewery and the Pearl
Brewery were the only Texas bre
weries producing near-beer during
the Prohibition years. Inspite of the
federal laws, Spoetzl still managed
to produce “good beer,” which
found its way to Spoetzl’s special
friends.
“I bootlegged, but I never got
caught,” Green said. “I hauled it to
Brenham and Smithville. We’d go
in at night to a big shot’s house and
he’d get so much. Then he’d get
with us and we’d go from house to
house until we’d unload.”
One of Spoetzl’s unmarked boot
leg trucks was stopped in Houston
for running a red light. When the
police found the good beer in un
marked bottles and tops, they
turned Spoetzl in to the Federal of
ficials. He was forced to close his
brewery down for 12 months and
rely on his ice business alone.
Spoetzl was held in high regard
by his employees, Green said. He
was considered a fair man, but he
also expected the work to be done.
“Mr. Spoetzl was a fine man to
Joe Green, a retired employee, worked for the brewery
for over 45 years driving a delivery truck. He says he
bootlegged during prohibition, but “never got caught.”
work for. He told me once that he
didn’t want to be a rich man, just a
good liver,” Green said. “He was
always giving away something.
“He’d see a hobo walking by and
he’d go out to help him. He’d give
him money and tell him to go buy
shoes or food, but not to tell any
one how much he’d given him. It
didn’t matter if he was talking to a
big shot, if he’d see some little boys
with ragged pants on, he’d excuse
himself and go help them.”
After Spoetzl died, his daughter,
affectionately referred to as “Miss
Cecelie” by the brewery workers,
took over the production and be
came the first woman in American
history tb have sole ownership of a
brewery.
During this time, non-returnable
bottles were added to the Shiner
collection of draught kegs and long
neck returnable bottles.
Miss Cecelie and her father both
felt the need to keep the brewery
on a small, local level, which ex
plains the lack of expansion, Beal
said.
But after 52 years of family own
ership, the brewery was sold to Bill
Bigler, a native of Denmark. Bigler
tried expanding, but found it im
possible with a small sales income
and a limited budget, Beal said.
In 1968, he sold the brewery to a
group of 10 businessmen in the
Shiner area. They are the present
owners.
Although the brewing capacity
did expand from 20,000 barrels a
year to 42,000, the brewery has re
mained friendly, informal and basi
cally small. Employees are still al
lowed to drink beer on the job, as
long as it doesn’t interfere with their
work.
The slow, German brewing pro
cess takes about 28-30 days, be
ginning in a mash tun where corn
grits (dehydrated corn), barley malt
and Artesian well water are mixed
together.
This mixture or run, is boiled for
about 2 and one-half hours. It then
goes into a copper brew kettle
where the hops, a heavy syrup that
gives beer a bitter taste, and water
is added. This brew is boiled for 8
and one-half hours.
Afterwards, it is sent to the fer
menting tank where yeast is added
to it from the top of the tank, mak
ing it a lager beer. The beer settles
out for 10-12 days, and is sent to
the celler storage tanks where it is
allowed to settle and filtered again.
The last stop is the bottling room
where the bottles, cans and crates
are sterilized and the labels
applied.
All beer, except for the beer that
is placed in kegs, is pasteurized for
about 45 minutes after being
placed in containers. The Spoetzl
Brewery turn out about 2,000
cases of beer a day.
Beal said the Spoetzl Brewery
has an advantage over other semi-
large breweries.
“There is a continual fight for
survival in small businesses, es
pecially in the brewing industry.
The top five breweries (Anheuser-
Busch, Miller, Schlitz, Pabst and
Coors) have over 65 percent of the
market and it is growing every year.
“We have an advantage over
the regional breweries,such as
Lone Star and Pearl, because
(they) couldn’t fight the nationals.”
The regional breweries have to
operate in five or six states to
branch out, Beal said, and soon
they are overcome by the na
tionals. So in this sense, the
smaller breweries really have a
better chance for survival, by only
concentrating on one state.
Almost all national breweries
have large advertising budgets and
make their own cans. Therefore,
they can afford to sell their beer at
cheaper prices.
The Spoetzl Brewery, which is
third place behind Anchor’s Steam
and an upstate New York beer as
the smallest brewery in the nation,
has to have their bottles and cans
made and sent to the brewery.
They also have a very limited ad
vertising budget. Shiner’s standard
retail prices however, are less ex
pensive than the top five competi
tors.
“Our advertisement is mainly
through human interest stories,”
Beal said. “We are known in Col
lege Station because the Dixie
Chicken, for example, has Shiner
Beer.
“The Littlest Brewery” is natur
ally feeling pressure from larger
breweries to sell out.
“I’ve been here 25 years and
every year rumor gets out that the
brewery is going to be sold. We are
too small for a brewery to be in
terested in us since Spoetzl in
tended for the brewery to be small,
we plan to keep that tradition,”
Beal said. “We’re small, unique,
mystic and I guess that's what
keeps us rolling.”
No matter how tough the battle
for survival gets, the people at the
Spoetzl Brewery will keep their op
timistic theory and head-strong at
titude. Although the brewery is
small, the product is good and
therefore then will be a market
because there is always room for a
good local beer.
Photos and story
by Margaret Johnson